This Holiday Season, Humans Are Counting on Us

It’s time to talk about our problem with alcohol.

In August of this year Obi Ndefo was putting groceries in his car outside Erewhon Natural Foods Market in Los Angeles after teaching a yoga class. As he stood at the back of his car, a car swerved at 40 miles an hour and hit Obi pinning him against his own car, reversed and drove away. Remarkably Obi lived through the next few moments and is “in a new body” now learning to live without his legs. His survival has been called a miracle. His resiliency is the evidence of that miracle. The driver was arrested the next day in Los Angeles and booked on a DUI charge. Obi holds no anger or hatred for the driver and has moved on. He says “I don’t have time for negativity in my life. People are counting on me.”

Two weeks later, in the twisting mountains outside of Taos, New Mexico, country singer Kylie Rae Harris crashed into 16 year old Taos high school student Maria Elena Cruz.  Maria’s father, Pedro Cruz, is Deputy Chief of the San Cristobal Volunteer Fire Department. He was among the first to arrive on the scene. Both young women were killed in the crash. Kylie Rae Harris toxicology reports showed .28% blood alcohol content. The data recorder on her truck noted she was traveling 102 miles an hour at the time of the crash. Kylie Rae, 30, from Wylie, Texas just outside of Dallas, had a prior DWI conviction in Collin County and had been ordered to install an interlock device on her car.

Last Tuesday on a crisp winter morning in Dallas, Nancy Dennington, a 72 year old woman, just returning home from her walk, was struck by a 30 year old in an Audi. The driver, Ryan Crews, stood blankly staring at her while two of my friends tried to save her life: comforting her with their words and blankets until the paramedics could arrive. She died somewhere inside of those moments.

Crews is believed to have been intoxicated from either drugs or alcohol. He failed a sobriety test and pills were taken from him at the scene. Five years ago, Ryan received a DWI for running a red light in the same neighborhood. Two years ago the interlock device on his car was removed. His booking photo was taken by police in his hospital bed. Police plan to charge Crews with Intoxication Manslaughter.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, accidents from drivers under the influence kill about 30 people in the U.S. each day. While fatalities from DWI accidents are down 13% in the last ten years, I sense our alcohol culture is on the rise. A recent marketing campaign in Dallas offers locals and travelers The Margarita Mile: an experience where you can 1) download the app; 2) explore the margaritas; 3) drink and check in and 4) explore the rewards.

In our parking garage at work, a billboard promoted the new wine bar where you can “Be Happy”. Alcohol is pervasive as necessary entertainment, a path to happiness and the place to be. Messages to drink responsibly feel lost in the small print. What is our responsibility in this space of popular culture? 

I asked myself this question the other night when I, with my two boys 12 and 13, and our small dog came upon three teens smoking pot at the park across the street near White Rock Lake in Dallas. “Is that what marijuana smells like?” my twelve year-old queried (too) loudly. As I watched them head to their car, the cold foggy air thick with the scent of weed, I weighed three options: 1) call 911; 2) call 311; 3) do nothing. I did nothing. But this question “what was my responsibility in this” weighs heavily as the air did that night. For Obi, for Maria Elena and for Nancy. What did we see and not say? Who do we watch and wonder, “are they safe to drive?” and how often do we dismiss the thought, turn the cheek and move on into our “complicated enough” lives?

I posted a brief story on a neighborhood page, briefly. Within minutes the comments section was filled with a frightening tone of tolerance and a resigned complacency: "get over yourself" one person wrote; another said "it's just pot". The comments worsened and I took the post down. But here's the thing. I can't get over myself. And is it...just pot? Is that what Maria Elena's father would say? 

This holiday, let’s stay in that uncomfortable space a little bit longer. It may be the gift we weren’t expecting to give.

Today is A Very Important Day

One, I am back on the Blog. Nice to be here with you, thank you. 

Two, today is the first of December and the first Sunday in Advent: a four-week period of "waiting and watching" for the birth of Christ. It is also the month of Hanukkah in the Jewish tradition and the close of the year. Hallmarks of beginnings and endings are all around us. 

And, three: I will be almost 50 in two years. Remember when Meg Ryan said through her sobs in "When Harry Met Sally", "I am going to be 40!" and goes on to say..."In 8 years!". While it's not possible Meg Ryan was so young, it is possible I will be 50 in two years. So I designed a two-year program of re-imagining, re-invention for this half-century on the planet. It is time. 

In November I celebrated two years of sober living --from alcohol. I have studied and learned how to change a behavior and feel like I am ready to expand this sobriety to the other "comforts" in my life: food, spending, social media. 

I am imagining this human, my human, in two years following this design of self-created seven agreements, I am calling these agreements the Secret Seven: 

1. Continued Sobriety from Alcohol and weekly meetings 

2. Daily exercise -30 min-1 hour any kind (walking/ yoga) 

3. Anti-inflammatory diet (no white items: sugar, gluten, dairy) 

4. Church weekly 

5. Meditation Daily 

6. Writing Daily 

7. Financial Partnership with Scott and the Boys (weekly meetings and savings plan)

This future human feels great on the inside and the outside. She is strong and powerful and embodies the commitments she's made to herself, others and the environment. This human tells the truth about herself and leads from her heart. Nothing is hidden. Nothing is feared: I will work on the mindfulness it will take to "be with" the challenges of these new practices. I feel like I've been training for this since 2011. I have everything I need to meet my future self. 

This is what it feels like to design a future: I am in this future, just a few hours into the first of December, watching and waiting. Attending. Listening. Sitting with the desire to comfort myself in all of the ways I know best, but this year, next year and the year after: consciously choosing something different: a new future. 

I am trying this future on beginning with this day in this moment. It is time. 

The Power of a Power Outage: Two Days in Silence

photo credit: Martin Valko 

We had a silent retreat in Dallas last week: unexpected, air met heat met cool and the winds ripped trees like matchsticks. I was on the North Dallas Tollway with Edward and I was terrified. We saw stop signs flying, power lines freed from the confines of poles and trees turned on end. My eleven year-old told me to meditate.

It wasn't the scary moment that is interesting to me--I spent my elementary years in Tulsa (AKA Tornado Alley) so revisiting those days is not my preference. What is interesting to me is the silence we kept together while we waited for the power (and our lives) to come back on.

If it had been hot it would not have worked: silent retreats are best offered with a level of comfort: distractions of heat are left to the real professionals (think Thailand). But we had a beautiful few nights of cool dry breezes. Nature walked into our houses and stayed for a while.

No television. No cell service pumping ipads. No hum of the air conditioner or lights.

The absence of everything.

I found it lovely. I slept soundly. I listened for the creek frogs and the birds: the volume of both was amplified if not new and unknown.

Our city kept silence. Yes, we drove out looking for a cell tower signal to coordinate work and updates from Oncor, but in the in-between moments Edward found books, art and unfortunately the poison ivy found him on one of many "tree damage" nature hikes.

Neighbors quietly helped neighbors build growing piles of branches and leaves. At a Silent Retreat we call this "Seva" or service to others. We saw so much service to others last week. The choice to care rose from silence and the ability to look up and see the need. Generators were offered to those with medical needs. Those with power offered others refuge. On Lakewood Boulevard someone cut a tunnel through a very large downed tree and on Monday morning my car slipped through it perfectly. Thank you.

At a silent retreat we light a candle for morning meditation. Our city brought the candles out: civilization's first light. Homes and windows glowed with simplicity. We could mark the streets without power easily: little tea lights offered all we needed to see rather than the dozens of lights we turn on every night. We did more with less.

Silent retreats are dark: I am reminded of the Upaya Zen Center, Plum Village and Omega on night walks to my room: evenings are dark and bedtime comes early. White Rock Lake was stunning in its blackness: no cover of city light to reflect and absorb. Dark earth made way for dark sky and in the dark we looked more carefully for what we could see.

Yes--just like a silent retreat there were irritations: the melting freezer, the annoyance of experiencing how I kept flipping the light switches on, the garage door we had to manually operate. My patience was especially tested by the lack of traffic lights. I did a lot of breathing at those endless intersections.

All of them and none of these mattered, though against the backdrop of silence. They too, like the storm we all felt, passed and then I found myself back in the bliss of silence, knowing it was special and knowing it wouldn't last forever.

And on Tuesday it all came back "on": the noise of our lives: the call and response of email and text, the noise of lights and the sounds of the house. We were thrust back into the world as the world started working again. Hopefully the layer of last week is in us though: a reminder to stop, to look, to be grateful for what is, and to care. 

When It's Time to Write: What Creative Writing Creates

I've spent the last few years preparing for this year: the unsettling inertia of a privately-held public museum grafting into a major university system. Our arrival as the Crow Museum of Asian Art now OF the University of Texas at Dallas was comet-quick: we "closed" just over three months after the real negotiations began. True to form it was "Trammell Crow Time". Sometimes the hardest decisions need to be the quickest; I think shrewd real estate gurus know this. I am learning this.

In the one-hundred days since we became "UTD" I've had the opportunity to see the future: a welcome and necessary balm to the things we've said goodbye to: our sky-lined office, colleagues, the Pearl Art Studio and the way we were.

The familiar is always nearby. I've been dropped off at college before: twenty-five years and seven months ago my parents left me on the third floor of Scottish Rite Dormitory at UT Austin in a dorm room with a blue and white striped comforter that matched my sweet roommate's decor from Mount Pleasant, Texas. I cried in the bathroom stall hoping no one would hear me. I went outside to see if my parents really left. It was a quick goodbye: they were gone along with the way things were: the wood paneled Buick Century Station Wagon (The Party Wagon), Joe, Stu, Jonathan and the rest of the Six Pack. They became my past.

But at the University of Texas at Austin I saw the future: on the first day I met Brian, Ian and Hillary: new friends for the ages. I saw myself as an art educator. I fell in love with my museum studies class and the works of Helen Frankenthaler and Jim Dine with Sue Mayer. I studied in the Best Place on Earth to Study: The Architecture Library. I ate lunch in the Law Building looking for a husband (no future there--he was somewhere else!). My context had changed, and while it took a few more than a hundred days I became that future: curious, challenged and called.

I am that college freshman again: wandering the buildings at the University of Texas at Dallas: imagining what the founders of the Harry Ransom Center were thinking before it was built: before the Huntington Art Gallery and the Blanton Museum of Art. I am beyond the past of the Crow as it was and before the future of the Crow Museum of Asian Art as it will be. I have so much to learn.

Last week I tried to run out to the metaphorical front of the dorm to see if my parents were still there. They weren't. But even if they were, we are different now: the context has changed: 29,000 students are waiting for us to write the future and we have work to do. Through these moments of change and uncertainty I am using the tools I've practiced: mindfulness meditation, creative writing, breathing and yoga. It is as if I knew I was going to need new and serious, disciplined practices to take with me into this future: I am prepared and ready. It's all in where I've been that gives me the fearless heart to walk into where we are going: curious, challenged and called.

And so the work begins to dream up the next chapter. I see myself as a university art museum leader and educator both continuing to create unparalleled experiences in the Dallas Arts District location (which is not going anywhere!) and creating the new second location at UT Dallas. I see myself mentoring university freshmen who might be crying in the dorm room bathroom. And I've fallen in love with what the Crow can mean to this new world: this campus and the community: intercultural, inclusive experiences with works of art. We get to lead as a complex of museum collections: a museum that will respond with relevance and belonging to others who arrive on their first day on campus: curious, challenged and called. 

I Want To Tell You About A Petal

At the Dallas Arboretum there are hundreds of thousands of them: petals. Spritely extensions of a flower stalk: heads up, bright, illumined by spring light, in perfect form.

But I want to tell you about one.

One petal of one tulip, on one stem.

It's shape is lovely, part spoon, part moon: the curve of champions. It holds air and scent. Warm sun and the drops of dew and rain.

Petal as rain-catcher.

This petal is part sculpture, statuesque and lean; defies gravity in its own definition of elegant posture.

First glance might tell you it is white. It is not. It's a warm white, near pale blush like a shoji screen caught by the flicker of candle or day. On a palate, white with the faintest dab of cadmium orange. Barely white.

From the base of this petal, as if left by brush stroke, a new color breaks the tradition of this white: warm pink. As if the Artist drew the loaded watercolor brush up, flattened the brush and lifted off the page at just the right moment. I want to tell you about this color:

The edges of the pink are indeterminate: a cadence of shading, a gradation impossible to capture in anything but the experience. This is real magic, this stroke of color I found on a petal of a tulip today.

It was my first miracle after lunch.

I'll make sure there are more. 

The Time Away Form

Recently my husband and I hosted 8 sixth graders for the Middle School Church Retreat. We also enjoyed meeting 3 college-age gentlemen who stayed with the boys in our home for the weekend as the “Retreat Leaders”. I was responsible for receiving meals from generous volunteers and making breakfast. I was excited about the weekend: drawing on my camp experience as cabin counselor, art teacher and girls camp director. I declared that our bungalow 2 bedroom home was being transformed into a Really Big Tent for the weekend. I was all in. 

One of the boys left a “Time Away Form” on our front entry. The title caught my eye. A Time Away Form? I thought. Don’t we all need this. My wandering thought was wrangled by the footnote of responsibility. Ah, yes, I am the one needing to be aware of this young man’s exit for a basketball tournament –and ultimately his return. I am the one. Time away. Got it. 

But what if? What if we had our own version of a Time Away Form? What would it be Time Away from? 

I find that if I self-schedule a weekend home without events (like the long week between Christmas and New Year’s) I am pulled like a magnet to the closets, the deep clean of the fridge and even the attic. I see others –too—pulled away from Time Away time as we line up at the Goodwill Truck depositing the things we thought we needed. 

Time Away competes with so many things: technology, the feed of friends, the myth of busy, the dubious luxury of “social” media. Time Away competes with habits of comparison, competition and easy shopping. In the time before I get out of bed in the morning I can easily “lose” the quiet hour to any number of social media platforms. It’s that easy. 

Filling out and committing to a Time Away form is harder, but the reward is beyond bliss: the bliss of solitude brings greater well being, a sense of peace and balance I’ll never find in work email or Facebook. 

This is the practice: make your own Time Away Form: 

Name: 

Purpose of Time Away: Set your intention 

Date of Time Away: 

Length of Time: 

Activity: 

__Mindful Practice __ Reading __ Writing __ Napping __ Walking __  _________________ 

Reflections on the experience: 

You can also come up with your own guidelines for your Time Away Time. Decide how you will interact/ not interact with technology, your children, your friends. Set up a space for time away: make it yours, light a candle during your Time Away Time. This gift to yourself, as a gift of solitude and contemplation, makes it sacred. Honor your time with a beginning and an ending: a short period (1-3 minutes) of silence marked by a bell. Take these entry and ending moments to focus on the breath and be with the intention you’ve set. 

Above all, be kind to yourself: your Time Away may last just 5 minutes. And the benefits of those 300 seconds will be the spacious well you can go back to later in the day. The more you practice the more you know: self compassion gives you what you need to give to others. Small dips are incrementally and infinitely beneficial. One day you will realize this sourcing is just the undercurrent –wholly part of who you are and as natural as breathing. 

The Last 15 Minutes in My Office: When Transformation Asks Us to Let Go

I'm not leaving the Crow Museum of Asian Art. But today I am leaving our offices here. For good. We moved into this sprawling office (complete with the Center for Contemplative Leadership) twenty-three months ago. I had a private corner office with stunning views of the Dallas Arts District and we enjoyed a hall you could roller skate on or have a mean game of bowling. We never did that, but we thought about it.

This is my seventh office in twenty years at the museum.

My First office was at the Front Desk. I sat there for a year. This was one of my favorite offices I've had: direct contact with our visitors truly on the pulse of the museum activity.

The second was on the first floor just off of the then Japanese Gallery: a tiny house for five employees. Great views of Flora Street and all of the activity there. Once I looked out at saw a car that looked like my Isuzu Rodeo being towed on a Friday at 4:30. Turns out it was my Isuzu Rodeo. It was a long weekend until I could retrieve it. We laughed until we cried.

We expanded that space and created an office for the Director: in 2002 it became mine. (Third.)

Then we turned that space into the Lotus Shop: always growing and creating larger space inside of space. We moved up to the 31st Floor for our Fourth office home. It felt too far away and for a spell I was in the First Lotus Shop just off the front desk. It was tough to be so "exposed" --I was bombarded with too much information. It had a large sliding glass door that closed me in like a cell. This was my Fifth office.

Next, after the opening of the Performing Arts Center, now the AT&T Performing Arts Center we moved into their former preview space on the mezzanine of Trammell Crow Center. Office number six. This was a period of remarkable growth: a large shared office area with our first conference room and kitchen. Next we expanded to add a library and a larger conference room. It was a sweet suite and with each move we felt we grew up a little more.

And then, two years ago, with generous support from our Landlords, we were invited to take a large space on the 35th floor: the original Trammell Crow Office space that opened here in 1984. It's rumored my sprawling corner office was also Trammell S.'s office back in the day. Good karma. We loved it up here: Corgan completed a stunning renovation. LA-based artist Amanda Giacomini was commissioned to paint a mural of 10,000 Buddhas in her continuing series. We held a very sacred puja when we opened the office. Seven was heaven. Literally.

I learned about a new ecosystem: what the world looks like from the 35th floor. I watched traffic and tracked emergency vehicles to make sure they weren't coming to the museum. I watched Care Flight go back and forth from Baylor to Children's Medical. I studied the renovations of the Cathedral, the roof of the Meyerson and the construction of Flora Lofts and the Hall Project(s). It is a completely different world up here. I did a lot of work whilst in Suite 3550, too. This was the Design Center for our Big Vision to become part of the University of Texas at Dallas. I am sitting, here for just a few more moments in the room where it happened.

And Monday I will be in a new room in my Eighth Office. It will be a place of designing our future museum for the Campus at UT Dallas: a place of building new futures for the museum so much farther beyond what we have known--even as I sit 35 stories in the sky. Vision can happen anywhere. And it's not the offices you sit in that matter: it's the people you choose to spend those hours with and the dreams you go for.

So, goodbye Seventh Office in the Sky. May our inspirations that happened here carry forward for the next inhabitants. And I know that ultimately the sky never leaves me.